Saturday Papers: Twitter value hits $9bn

Top stories

The Daily Telegraph: Twitter, the social media network, will be worth $9 billion following a new investment from the world's largest asset manager, it has emerged.

The Daily Telegraph: Britain is on course for an unprecedented triple-dip recession and the country's top-tier credit rating is under severe threat after the economy shrank by 0.3% in the final three months of 2012.

Financial Times: US stocks climbed for a fourth consecutive week despite weakness in shares of Apple; the S&P 500 rose 0.5% to 1,503 on Friday, gaining 1.1% for the week; the Dow Jones climbed 1.8% for the week to 13,896; the Nasdaq lagged behind and rose just 0.5%.

The Daily Telegraph: Boris Johnson yesterday heaped pressure on George Osborne to abandon his austerity programme, saying it was time to ditch the "hair shirt" agenda.

The Independent: Strikes across the South African mining industry hit Anglo American's productivity during the fourth quarter of 2012; the mining group said platinum production fell by 29%.

Business and economics

Financial Times: A top executive at Square, a fast-growing San Francisco payments start-up, has resigned amid accusations of sexual harassment.

Financial Times: Carl Icahn, the activist investor, has raised the pressure he is applying to Transocean, the offshore drilling contractor, building his stake to 5.6%, including options, and calling on the company to resume paying a dividend.

The Daily Telegraph: Starbucks has raised fears of a customer boycott in Britain after breaking with practice and failing to give any details of the performance of its UK business over Christmas.

Financial Times: Apple lost the crown as the world’s most valuable company to ExxonMobil on Friday, capping a difficult week for the iPhone maker and its investors.

The Independent: Procter & Gamble (P&G) cheered Wall Street yesterday with evidence that its attempts to reignite growth by cutting costs and refocusing efforts on developed markets were paying off.

Financial Times: Caterpillar has reported its first decline in retail machinery sales in more than two and a half years on a slowdown in demand from Asia and North America.

Financial Times: The Welsh government has earmarked more than £50 million to back a new investment fund designed to boost fledgling life science companies based in or willing to move into the country.

The Daily Telegraph: Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said the "jury is still out" over whether his radical bond buying programmes will be enough to restore stability to the eurozone.

The Guardian: A former star derivatives trader at Deutsche Bank has been stripped of about £34 million in bonuses after he was fired for alleged involvement in a conspiracy to manipulate Libor inter-bank interest rates.

The Independent: Goldman Sachs chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, yesterday defended the investment bank's controversial plans to defer bonuses to benefit from the looming cut in the top rate of income tax to 45p.

Financial Times: Crude oil prices hit a three-month high on Friday, backed by improving sentiment towards global economic growth and geopolitical worries about the key producing region of North Africa following a terrorist attack in Algeria.

The Daily Telegraph: William Hill has agreed to pay up to £15 million to keep hold of four members of Sportingbet's management team in Australia following its takeover of the online bookmaker.

Financial Times: Novozymes, the industrial enzymes maker, put in a strong performance after reporting forecast-beating fourth-quarter profit and pledging to keep margins at current levels for the next five years.

Daily Mail: Britain's biggest banks are facing fresh scrutiny as the City watchdog publishes its first update into the mis-selling of interest rate swaps to small businesses.

The Daily Telegraph: Michael Clarke, the chief executive of Premier Foods, is reportedly poised to quit the food manufacturer after less than 18 months in the job.

The Daily Telegraph: John Lewis has become the first British retailer to caution that last week's snow hit sales growth.

The Independent: Miton, the asset manager formerly known as MAM Funds, yesterday said its 2012 profits would be ahead of market forecasts of £3.4 million before tax.

The Daily Telegraph: Oil explorer Afren was the worst performing mid-cap stock as it emerged that recent takeover talk may be little more than unfounded speculation.

Daily Mail: Banks and building societies generated revenues of £8.8 billion from current accounts in 2011 – the equivalent of £139 per active account, figures revealed.

Financial Times: An increase in its discretionary funds in the past few months has helped boost Charles Stanley’s funds under management to £16.4 billion, the wealth manager and stockbroker said.

Financial Times: BATS Global Markets privately told clients on Friday that it miscalculated the number of trades its US exchange had processed at inferior prices.

Financial Times: Halliburton, the oil services group, said it expected the number of US oil and gas rigs to decline this year, as it reported a 15% drop in earnings for 2012.

The Daily Telegraph: Britain will be at the forefront of a push to fill around a million technology jobs across Europe by 2016, under plans drawn up by the European Commission.

The Guardian: Samsung Electronics posted a 19% increase in sales but warned of a looming slowdown in the market.

Daily Mail: Shares in FirstGroup jumped as investors shrugged off its warning that Hurricane Sandy in the United States is likely to shave nearly £10 million off its annual operating profit.

Share tips, comment and bids

Financial Times: Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, the company formerly called Anglo Irish Bank, is appointing advisers in the UK and Ireland to help it manage the disposal of its €18 billion property-backed loan book.

Financial Times: City investors are poised to enter the race to acquire hundreds of bank branches which the Royal Bank of Scotland must dispose of.

Financial Times: AT&T has agreed to buy highly sought-after wireless spectrum covering a population of 42 million people in 18 states from Verizon Wireless for $1.9 billion in cash, and mobile licences in five US markets.

Daily Mail (Comment): Amid all the clamour of past wrongdoing it is easy to forget that the banks are failing to do the basics well.

The Independent (Comment): There is no reason to be pleased with the growth figures which were announced on Friday, but we do need to keep a sense of proportion – a decline of 0.3 per cent is a small amount on a very large number.

Financial Times (Lex): There is one reason to hold on: the hope that P&G can improve its profitability. The rate at which it converts sales into profits has drifted down.

We use cookies to give you the best experience on our website. You can continue to use the website and we'll assume that you are happy to receive cookies. If you would like to, you can find out more about cookies and managing them at any time here. This site is for Professional Investors only, please read our Risk Disclosure Notice for Citywire’s general investment warnings

We use cookies to improve your experience. By your continued use of this site you accept such use. To change your settings please see our policy.